The paper aims to show the influence of last years transit oriented planning of Shanghai on the metropolitan spatial structure and the intermodality between public transport and slow mobility by two case studies of transit hubs: Zhongshan Park and Wujiaochang.

Abstract

The transformation process of Chinese cities observed over the past 30 years have been permanently influenced by the emergence of new practices of mobility on the one hand and by planning of a new Chinese urban polycentric pattern on the other.

We already observe today how urban form and recent transportation systems interact with the Chinese cities structure and with the modal choice of their inhabitants. After the ''collectivist'' era of bicycle, followed by active Car Oriented Policies that will continue to impact urban development, major Chinese cities are investing now in the rail networks, which participate in the spatial restructuring of Chinese cities. The spatial structure of Chinese cities, influenced by the policy of decentralized concentration, which sought to regulate the population growth, has seen a polycentric pattern appearing in less than 30 years, and shaped not only by new towns but also by the ''Development Zones'' and some new metropolitan sub-centres.

Interaction between polycentric form and public transport systems is materialized by transit hubs linked to real estate development where future urban mobility is more and more shaped by multimodality.

The paper aims to demonstrate the influence of these new multimodal hubs and urban cores on some new mobility trends in China, focusing on the observation of the Zhongshan Park and Wujiaochang hubs in Shanghai. The intermodality between transport modes that appears around the hubs in both formal and informal ways is decrypted and highlights the potential for developing slow mobility upstream and downstream transit hubs in the context of the new rail oriented policy of China.